Lecture 4: Leadership Flashcards
(27 cards)
What is leadership?
Process whereby one individual influences other group members toward the attainment of defined group or organisational goals
What are the three key elemts of leadership?
Influence: Process of influencing actions or attributes of group members. Usually non-coercive
Goal directed: Influence is for a purpose; to attain defined group or organisational goals
Followers: Leaders only exist in relation to followers
What are the two different types of leaders that can emerge?
Formal leader: In a position of power
- Usually chosen by the organisation
Informal leaders: Those who emerge as a ‘de-facto’ leader
- In situations with no formal leader
- They seem “leader-like”
- Fit with implicit theory of leadership
What is the difference between leadership and management?
Vroom and Jago (1988)
- Good managers possess both management and leadership skills
- Can swap between depending on situations
What are trait approaches to leadership?
1930s-1940s (and revisited)
Leaders are born not developed, they have certain stable characteristics e.g. physical characteristics, abilities, personality etc
According to research how do leaders emerge?
- Physical attractiveness
- Height
- Dominance
- Masculinity
- Conscientiousness
- Intelligence
- Extraversion
- Openness to experience
- Emotional Stability
According to research waht traits make the most effective leader?
- Intelligence
- Extraversion
- Openness to experience
- Emotional stability
What is evaluation of trait appr0aches?
- Some consistency in traits that are important for effective and emergent leaders (intelligence and big 5 personality)
- Modest effect sizes
- Traits have a greater impact on leadership emergence than effectiveness
- Are leaders really born? Can’t we develop leaders?
What are style approaches of leadership?
1950s-1960s
Leadership can be developed
Effective leadership is less about out traits and more about how these traits are expressed in our behaviour
What are Ohio and Michigan Studies?
Two scales of consideration and initiating structure
Consideration (relationship orientation): Relationship behaviours, building respect trust, and liking (workers viewed as people and taken an interest in)
Initiating structure (task-orientation): Task behaviours, organising work, defining roles and responsibilities, scheduling (workers viewed as a means for getting work accomplished)
Evaluation of style approaches:
More optimistic: Just because you aren’t born with particular traits doesn’t mean you can never lead
Better predictors oof leadership effectiveness than traits
Still fairly simplistic: is the same style right for all situations and all followers?
What are contingency approaches?
Late 1960s - 1980s
- Idea is that the type of leader/leadership behaviour that is best will depend on contingencies
- Organisational context
- Task context
- Follower context
- Focus on leader effectiveness and context
What is situational leadership theory?
Hersey and Blanchard (1969)
Leaders are effective when they select the right style for the “readiness” of their followers (they should adjust
Able and unconfident followers: High / readiness = participative style
Able and confident followers: High readiness = delegating style
Unable and unconfident followers: low readiness = telling style
Unable and confident followers = low/moderate readiness = selling style
What is evaluation of contingency approaches?
- Weak empirical support for contingency theories
- Context is important but difficult to map
- Consideration of match between context/needs of followers and leader style/traits is an advance
What are the newer approaches of leadership:
- Tranformational
-LMX - Destructive
What is tranformational leadership theory?
- Bass 1990
- Most influential theory in current management thinking
- Transactional leader: Motivates subordinate by observing performance identifying rewards and distribute rewards for appropriate behaviour
Tranformational leader: Inspires followerd to go beyong self-interest in the service of a higher collective purpose
What makes a tranformational leader?
Individualised consideration:
- Followers treated on own merits seeking to develop followers
Intellectual stimulation:
- Encourages free thinking and emphasising reasoning
Inspirational motivation:
- Creates a vision of the future, inspiring followers
Idealised influence:
- Setting a personal example, makes personal sacrifices, takes responsibility for own actions
Tranformational leadership evaluation:
Strong evidence that tranformational leaders are effective:
- Linked with better performance in followers, in teams and in organisation
- Largest effects size for leadership effectiveness
Can be trained, through some person characteristics can help:
- Contrasts to trait approaches
- Associated with strong emotional stability self confidence
- Believe they are in control of their destinies
Are all transformational leaders good?
- Many dictators fit the description (Hitler Problem)
- Followers may copy unethical charismatic leaders
- Need for ethical, authentic leadership
Tranformational leadership may not be important or appropriate for all jobs
- Transactional may be appropriate for ensuring routine work
Full range model:
- Bass (1999): argued that the best leaders are both transformational and transactional
What is Leader member eXchange theory?
- Graen and Uhl-Bien (1995)
- Follower-centred approach; leadership involves two-way relationship between leader and followers
- Type of relationship can influence follower performance and satisfaction
LMX theory:
The quality of leader-follower relationships is
based on the types of exchanges
* Social versus economic
* Leaders develop better relations with some
followers than others through these
exchanges
- LMX will affect follower performance,
commitment, morale
What is evaluation of LMX theory?
- Strong evidence for differences between ingroup and outgroup
members - Ingroup members are more satisfied with jobs, perform more
effectively, less likely to resign - Martin, Guillaume, Thomas, Lee & Epitropaki (2016) meta- analysis
shows LMX predicts task performance, citizenship performance, and
is negatively related to counterproductive performance in followers - How practical is it?
- Can leaders give the same treatment to every employee?
- Equality vs. equity
- 80% of leaders differentiate
- LMX Importance - Not all followers want a high LMX relationship
(Lee et al., 2020) - Some LMX relationships are ambivalent (i.e., both good and bad at
the same time) (Lee et al., 2019) - LMX Differentiation – impact on team performance (Martin et al., 2018)
Are there any gender differences?
- Recent review suggests no overall gender differences in leadership
effectiveness
However: - Self-ratings: Males more effective
- Other-ratings: Females more effective
- There may be differences in leadership styles
- Women likely to prefer democratic, participative and
transformational styles - Men likely to prefer autocratic styles
What is the glass cliff?
- Ryan & Haslam (2005)
proposed a gender difference
in leadership relating to
positions in which women are
recruited/promoted as leaders - Women are more likely to be
selected for top leadership
positions at times of
organisational precarity - Men are given preferential access to more
desirable, stable leadership positions - Women are more likely to be put in a leadership position during times of
organisational crisis - As a result, female leaders are less likely to succeed
- The glass cliff has been demonstrated in several domains (e.g., politics,
legal assignments, school elections;
What is destructive leadership types?
A scale with 5 variables: Pro-subordinate, anti-subordinate, pro-organisation, anti-organisation and laissex-faire leadership
A mixture of pro-subordinate and pro-organisation is the best, abelled as constructive leadership
